A View from Leila Takayama

Friendly Machines
Making human-friendly robots is a pressing challenge
and a big opportunity.
April 23, 2013

As a research scientist I hear this question all the time: when are your robots going to replace
me? But that is certainly not my goal.

A more important objective, to my mind, is making robots more human-friendly in their form,
behavior, and function. By this I mean that robots should be appealing and approachable. They
should behave in ways that are easy for humans to interpret, and they should perform functions
that meet human needs. This applies in places like factories where more robots can work
effectively alongside people (see “Baxter: The Blue-Collar Robot,”). This is not about making
human-like robots. Humanoid robots have a place in entertainment, medical training, and
possibly other domains, but human-friendly robots are not necessarily humanoid. In fact, by
setting user expectations too high, looking too human could make it more difficult for a robot to
interact with people. We are often disappointed and frustrated with the limited capabilities of
robots that look as if they should be just as smart as we are.

These robots also do not need to behave just like humans. They might, for example, behave
more like service dogs. As long as they are predictable, robots have a hope of making it in the
everyday world. Many people know how to communicate with dogs just fine without needing
language at all.
Finally, these human-friendly robots must meet real human needs, not only the needs of their
inventors. Fetch-a-beer and fold-a-towel demos are nice scientific steps toward building more
general robotic capabilities. But what we need now is for human-centered-design researchers
and product-minded entrepreneurs to do the dance of the necessary and the possible with the
robotics community.
Why does this humanist stuff matter? Because it will help us realize the true potential of the
technology. Too many long-term studies of robots in hospitals, offices, and homes have
revealed the problem with ignoring the importance of human-to-robot interaction: the robots
end up interred in closets, retired to garages, or “mysteriously” disabled and shoved under
desks.
Many of my robotics colleagues cringe at the challenges presented by unstructured
environments that personal robots need to navigate. But the untrained people around these
robots present an entirely different set of equally important challenges. Without serious
involvement from the interaction-design, product-design, and entrepreneurial communities,
personal robots don’t stand a chance of surviving out in the “real world.”